История становления самосознающей души Андрея Белого в контексте немецкой историософии (Х. Ст. Чемберлен, О. Шпенглер)

One significant context for Andrei Belyiʼs Istoriia stanovleniia samosoznaiushchei dushi (ISSD) is contemporary German “historiosophy” as represented by Houston Stewart Chamberlainʼs The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) and Oswald Spenglerʼs The Decline of the West (1918), both of which are treated in this article alongside Belyiʼs reception of them. It explores the similarities and differences between these works and Belyiʼs own culturo-historical project. It will be argued that Belyiʼs ISSD, with its characteristic concept of a spiraliform evolution of culture, can be understood in methodological terms as a synthesis of Chamberlainʼs linear with Spenglerʼs cyclical view of cultural history. As a conception of evolving human self-consciousness, understood as the decisive driving force of cultural development, Belyiʼs anthropological view surpasses former biological references to a cultural-historical morphology in both the concepts of Darwinist racial conflict (Chamberlain) and botanical life cycles (Spengler). This methodological focus of Belyiʼs work is also reflected in its stylistic aspects.